


July

by starbear (panda_hiiro)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, JuLance Challenge 2018, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-24
Packaged: 2019-06-09 03:59:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15258936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panda_hiiro/pseuds/starbear
Summary: Writing fills for JuLance 2018. Mostly one-shots, <1k each. See individual chapters for notes; will update tags as I add to this.





	1. Varadero

**Author's Note:**

> Decided to give JuLance a shot! Can't say that I will write for each day, but I'll put whatever I get done here. Mostly one-shots, under 1k, I imagine. Will update tags as necessary. 
> 
> The first prompt is Day 10 - Varadero.

Even now, light years away from Earth, Lance heard the ocean every time he closed his eyes.

The insistent call of the waves lingered in his mind alongside the ever present image of home, colored always by the sea. When he was a boy, water meant freedom - from the confines of island life, from the crowded noise of a house too small for a large family, from the rigid rules and expectations of school - and in a silent dare against himself, Lance pushed that boundary as far as he could. 

A memory: ten years old, running out onto the beach, heedless of the way the sand burned the soles of his feet, barreling straight into the water with reckless abandon. Lance let the surf consume him, crashing more than wading out into the depths, the scrape of seashells underfoot as he followed the tide’s pull to chase the distant glimmer of sunlight on the horizon.

"Don't go too far," his mother cried, her voice already distant on the shore. His father held his youngest sister in his arms; his older siblings tumbled in the shallows, but Lance moved on, water to his knees, to his waist, up past his stomach.

_ Don't go too far. _

Water to his chest, he let his feet drift up, buoyed by saline, weightless as he kicked back to float on the surface. The sky above, an endless expanse of pure, uninterrupted blue, reflected in the clear water all around him. A world of seamless color, all encompassing, and he nothing more than a small, tiny imperfection in the middle of it: he could stay there forever, suspended in that azure field, buffeted by the gentle ebb and pull of the waves. He could let the water take him where it would, somewhere new, somewhere far away.

Only when he tried to find the shore and realized that he could no longer see his family, he started to panic.

Suddenly his limbs felt like heavy, lead weights attached to his body; the tide was not a gentle thing, but a relentless force pulling him farther and farther away from the safety of land. The sea was restless, a dark and deep place, and his mother's words rang out in his ears again -

_ Don't go too far. _

What do you do when you stray too far from home?

His father found him, floundering in the water, and pulled him back to shore. Lance remembered the strength of his father's arms; he remembered the wet feel of the sand beneath his toes, and thinking that the ground there was solid, tangible proof of the existence of 'home.' He remembered the exasperated admonishment in his mother's voice when she scooped him into her arms, smothering him with the intensity of her embrace as she said, 

"Silly boy. What did I tell you?"

No shoreline here, and even his father’s big, strong arms couldn’t find him this far out in the wheeling darkness of space. But Lance could still hear his mother’s warning, a distant echo over the ghost of the waves in his mind - 

_ Don't go too far. _

  
  
  



	2. Team

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 11 - Team Voltron.
> 
> Lance thinks about what family means.

What was kind of funny about the whole thing was that before, Lance couldn’t wait to be as far away from home as possible. 

That was part of being a kid though, of being the middle son in a big family, unremarkable except for in the way he forced people to notice him. Lance _ wanted _ people to notice him - he wanted to hold the world’s attention, he wanted to be a  _ name, _ not just some nobody kid from Cuba. The Galaxy Garrison was his ticket out; and then the Blue Lion arrived, with the promise of something greater than Earth could provide.

Lance McClain, Defender of the Universe. It  _ did _ have a nice ring to it. 

So it was funny that once he got out there in the middle of all the action and glamour, the only thing he could think about was home - the subtle perfume on his mother’s skin when she hugged him, the low rumble of his father’s snoring, the heavy feeling in the air right before an unexpected summer storm. He never missed those things before. 

He’d never been so far from home, before. 

It took them a week to figure out how to form Voltron. To say their teamwork needed improvement was putting it mildly; more accurately, they all sucked. Not much of a shocker, considering that at best they could barely tolerate each other. So it came as a surprise when Hunk swept both Keith and Lance into his arms and said, “we’re like brothers.” Lance didn’t get that, because he had brothers already - two of them, Marco and Luis, half a universe away, and that was  _ his  _ family. 

Lance knew exactly where his family was. 

It definitely wasn’t here. 

 

* * *

 

Red dust swirled in a spindrift off the rocky surface of the moon they touched down on, a lonely satellite drifting on the edge of the star system that had once been home to Daibazaal. Lance could say it was the dirt irritating his eyes, if anyone asked, not that anyone would have believed him. 

The loss of the castleship sat like a weight in his chest, a tangible sort of emptiness that he had yet to fully comprehend. For a year now they had called that place home, but more than shelter it had given them the sense of purpose and resolve that drove them all. It had been their mooring against the tides of war; it had been the place where they had found each other.

The dirt was really irritating his eyes. 

“Hey.” Keith found Lance under the shelter of the Red Lion, shortly before their departure time. Now, outside of the frantic chaos of battle, Lance saw more clearly the changes wrought on Keith - the passage of time writ clearly in the sharpening of his features and the broadening of his form, the cruel line of a fresh scar carved across his cheek. Eventually, Lance would ask him about all of that. “I didn’t get a chance to say it before, but you did a good job out there. Red’s really taken to you, huh?” 

“Yeah, well, what can I say, she knows talent when she sees it.” Lance shrugged. “You weren’t so bad yourself, hotshot. Guess you learned a thing or two with the Marmorites.” 

Keith breathed a soft laugh at that.

“Guess so.” Keith cast his gaze up, towards Red’s looming form, something distant in his expression. “We’re really going back to Earth, huh. You must be happy.” 

“Aren’t you?” 

“I don’t know. I didn’t leave anything behind on Earth,” Keith said. “Besides. I found my family out here.” 

A quiet moment passed between them, and Lance remembered the way the Lions roared when Shiro woke up, voices raised in triumphant unison as if to say, ‘ _ we are one, we are whole again.’  _ And Lance realized, just like that. 

“You know,” he said, “I think we all did.” 


	3. Uncle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the war, Lance's sister comes to visit him on the Castle of Lions.

Veronica’s arrival to the Castle of Lions is heralded by the stampeding sound of tiny feet, and Lance barely has the door to his quarters open before two small masses of energy barrel directly into him. His sister grins cheekily, lingering in the hall as her sons clamor up their uncle’s tall, lanky frame.

“Uncle Lance! Uncle Lance!” Four years old, twins - even Lance can’t tell them apart, most of the time. “We missed you!”

“Hey, kiddos!” Lance staggers under the weight of two wriggling toddlers, but recovers with the grace and poise due a paladin of Voltron. “Missed you, too. Did you both get bigger? What’s your mom been feeding you, huh?”

“Can we ride in the Red Lion again?” The boys stare up at him with bright anticipation shimmering in their eyes. “We went so fast last time! It was like, ‘woosh!’”

“I thought you both threw up the last time you rode in that thing,” Veronica says as she walks in, the door sliding shut with a smooth hiss behind her.

“Yeah,” the boys say, almost in unison, “That’s what made it fun.”

Lance laughs, and leans forward to kiss his sister’s cheek.

“Thanks for coming, Ronnie,” he says.

“Of course,” she says. “If you can’t come to us, we’ll come to you, y’know.”

The twins finally detach themselves from Lance and scamper off to explore. There isn’t too much to see - all of the paladins were afforded expanded quarters in the rebuilt Castle of Lions, but there’s only so much a single guy can do to cozy up a bare room. It’s not like his parents’ house, full of memories hung in picture frames on every wall; or his sister’s place, littered with toys and snacks and crayon marks. His sister seems to be assessing that, looking around with the kind of focused, critical gaze that she _must_ have inherited directly from their mother.

“It’s not bad,” she says, finally, “A lot neater than your room at home used to be.”

“Hey, my room was always clean.”

“You and I have _very_ different definitions of the word ‘clean,’ then,” Veronica says. “Mom and Dad say ‘hi,’ by the way. They wanna come next time.”

“Good. I haven’t had a chance to give them the full castle tour,” Lance says.

“I still can’t believe you literally live in a castle. _My_ little brother.” Veronica shakes her head. Her hair is loose, a long, dark cascade over her shoulder. She looks more and more like their mother, each time Lance sees her. “Guess you really think you’re something now, huh?”

“Not to brag? But yeah,” Lance says, “I _am_ kind of a big deal. Defender of the universe? Intergalactic hero? Single-handedly responsible for saving Earth from utter annihilation? That was all me.”

“ _Pr_ _etty_ sure it takes five of you to run that giant cat robot contraption of yours,” Veronica says. “Besides, Mr. ‘Defender of the Universe,’ if you’re such hot stuff, how come you’re still single, huh?”

“I’m not single. I’m just...keeping my options open.”

“Uh-huh. Sure. It’s been over a year since you got back,” Veronica says, “Seriously. When are you gonna find yourself a girl, bro?”

“Are we really getting into this?” Lance sighs, and rolls his eyes. “Now? You’re as bad as mom.”

The truth is, of course there’s a girl.

There’s a boy, too, and maybe someday Lance will feel comfortable enough to admit that. Maybe, someday, he’ll be brave enough to tell both of them how he feels.

Now, though, his nephews provide a perfect distraction by running back into the room, having raided Lance’s closet and claimed his paladin armor for their own. One of them has the chestplate on, the piece as big as his torso, tiny limbs sticking out all akimbo; the other has requisitioned his helmet, comically large as it wobbles on his small head.

“Uncle Lance! Look! We’re paladins!”

“Well, would you look at that?” Lance says, “Guess I can go ahead and retire, huh? You two gonna take over piloting Red for me?”

The boys look at each other, and share a devious grin.

“Nah. We wanna pilot the Black Lion instead.”

“What?!” Lance’s voice pitches up, scandalized. “You little traitors!”

The twins scurry away again, giggling with childish delight. Lance watches as they settle down, playing with the pieces of his armor, and tries to imagine what it would be like to have that kind of energy here all the time, to have a family of his own. He’s a little too young to be wondering about that, he thinks, but more importantly…

“You know, Ronnie, what you were saying, before? I guess, really, Voltron’s still gotta come first for a while,” he says. “That’s all.”

“Yeah.” She takes his hand, and squeezes it, a look of understanding on her face. “You’ve really grown up a lot, haven’t you, Lance?”

A part of him wonders if that’s really true. Another part thinks he’s still light years away from being close to grown up.

But if that’s so, then maybe, at least, he’s on the right track.

 


	4. Brightest Star

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance and Shiro come up with new constellations on Arus.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't write for every day of this month, but I'll add what I can! Prompts for this week are from @kurotetsukei 's #RazzleDazzleWeek - https://twitter.com/kurotetsukeis/status/1021415501338161152

Lance knows that the brightest star in the Earth sky is Sirius. 

When he was a kid his grandfather showed him how to find it: easy to pick out, right below Orion’s belt and to the left, brilliant in its luminosity, a fixed point in the summer sky. The night sky on Arus is colored in shades of dark that Lance has never even imagined, unfiltered by pollution or human illumination; underneath this alien atmosphere, countless light years away from home, none of the stars provide Lance any bearing. It’s breathtaking, and it leaves him feeling very, very small. 

He hasn’t gone far from the castle - though, really, he’s on an  _ alien planet _ , he should be allowed to explore - but there’s a lake to the south, small and calm and less than half a mile walk. He sheds his shoes on the bank, rolls his pants legs up to his knees, and wades out into the cold water to stare up at the endless stretch above. Reflected, mirror-like, in the lake’s even surface, Lance can almost imagine that he’s standing in the middle of empty space, hovering among the infinite number of stars. One of them, maybe, is the yellow sun he left behind. 

The steady sound of footsteps draws his attention, and when he turns he sees Shiro, unmistakable even in the shroud of night, walking towards him. 

“Lance?” Something hesitant, halting in his voice; Lance realizes this might be the first time they’ve ever spoken to one another alone. “What are you doing out here?” 

“Oh, you know,” Lance says, “Just getting some fresh air. There’s 10,000 years of funk in that castle.” 

“You shouldn’t be out by yourself,” Shiro says, and Lance can  _ hear _ the stern frown on his face.

“Well, now I’m not, am I?” Lance shrugs. “You gonna join me or what? Water’s nice.” 

A pause, and Lance braces for a scathing lecture; instead there’s a quiet shuffle, followed by a soft gasp from Shiro as he wades out beside Lance.

“Yikes,” Shiro says, “That’s cold.” 

“Aw, don’t be a baby, it’s not that bad,” Lance says, and immediately regrets it - he can talk like that to Hunk, or Pidge, or even Keith, but he isn’t sure of his boundaries with Shiro yet. They’re teammates now, sure, and out here the rank and file of the Garrison has little bearing on how they interact. But In Lance’s mind, Shiro is still the implacable golden child of the Galaxy Garrison, stolid and perfect, a guiding light - his Sirius, the brightest star in his field of vision. Lance doesn’t see that changing anytime soon. 

“I might be getting used to it,” Shiro says, with a small laugh, apparently not taking offense. “It is pretty nice, out here. How’d you find this place?” 

“Just wandering around. I thought, maybe, you know.” Lance fidgets, and shoves his hands into his pockets. “We might could see Earth from here.” 

“Probably not.” Shiro’s face is pale, illuminated only by starlight. “I don’t know how far away we are, exactly, but…”

“Yeah. Figures.” Lance breathes a sigh, and turns his face skyward. “Hey. Don’t you think that group of stars there looks kinda like Voltron’s face?” 

“Really? Where?” 

“There. And that one looks like an Arusian, if you turn your head sideways.” 

“I think I see it.” Shiro smiles. “Yeah.” 

The expression is a rarity on Shiro, and Lance catches himself staring for what is probably a beat too long before pointing upwards again.  

“That one there looks like Keith’s head.” Lance gestures in a vague motion. “I think I’m gonna call it the Mullet Constellation.” 

“ _ Lance.”  _

“What? I’m just saying, it does.” 

“Okay. Maybe a little,” Shiro admits, “Honestly though? I thought it looked more like Coran’s mustache.” 

“No way, man, the Mustache Constellation is over there. Right underneath the Black Lion.” 

“Oh. That does look like Black,” Shiro says. “I think Blue’s there, too. See? They’re right next to each other.”  

Lance would like to think that there’s some meaning to that - the stars aligned to position them together, mirroring the way they are now, some invisible thread of fate drawing them towards each other. Or maybe it’s just chance that they’re both here, picking out constellations under a foreign sky with cold water ebbing around their legs. Either way: Lance might not know where the brightest star in the sky up there is, but he thinks he might have something to guide him now. 


End file.
